I have different approach. I got Spotify Premium, so I have access to all the music I listen to. When Taylor Swift pulled her songs from the service I said to myself: "I'm not going to bother, I don't have to listen to her songs anymore!". I have same approach with Netflix, if a movie or TV series is not there, I don't watch. I don't feel entitled to listen/watch content that is outside of the services I pay for.

My approach costs less and keeps my free time free from stress. On the other hand if you do enjoy making a private streaming service for your friends and family then by all means, but try justifying your effort better.

I would also add that some policies helped in telco profitability as well. In Finland one of the big ones was that as long as 3G service is available in rural area it is fine for the telco to cut down the physical cable to the household. Telcos removed thousands of kilometers of error prone cables and replaced them with cell towers.

Another great change was that almost all new apartments (since 2000) started treating internet connection as an utility, same way as water or heat with RJ-45 cabling in homes. The bill is included in the maintenance fee so it's easier to get better prices from telcos as they have only 1 bill to send, 1 router to install, 1 fiber to dig. Even old apartment buildings have adopted this practise and cost of high speed internet has gone down significantly.

Third change that was done is that there is a maximum price set for renting the cables. In case a 3rd party wants to serve a customer in an area they don't have cables they can utilize the existing cabling and pay a reasonable rent for that cable.

Last but not least the emergence of 4G has changed the fixed connection offering. It's now very common for a regular household (especially outside of city centers) to only have a 4G router at home instead of ADSL modem, because 4G is faster and cheaper. Only fiber can really compete with 4G anymore.

Kumiorava writes: "China will complete and put into service the world's longest quantum communication network stretching 2,000km from Beijing to Shanghai by 2016, say scientists leading the project." — South China Morning Post write.

The rate of innovation in China is amazing and it is obvious that China is no longer just a world's manufacturer or copier of the innovations. I'm looking forward to the race in innovation that is soon needed for US and Europe to keep up with Chinese. Most impressing thing about Chinese innovation is that they do implement the innovations in a pace that is unheard of in western countries.Link to Original Source

I understand that there is great concern in immigrants arriving to work in US, but I don't think closing off the borders is solution. You can ask yourself two questions:

1. If you wanted to go and someone was willing to hire you abroad, should you be able to work in an another country?2. If a person from another county wanted to come and someone was willing to hire that person in US, should he/she be able to work in US?

The whole thing boils down to this, freedom of being employed anywhere in the world. It does sound crazy but we are no longer living in closed societies, at least I do hope that is the case. If H1B visa program is shut down, there are virtually no legal paths to US job market for foreigners.

There needs to be two changes to the work visa rules:

1. H1B worker is able to seek another job during his/her visa duration, as long as the job is similar or better than his current job. Currently not allowed.2. Is laid off the period for seeking new employment is 6 months before needing to leave. Currently it is 7 days.

Those two changes would make foreign workers able to raise their salaries and leave abusive employers. This would bring healthier work environment for everyone and increases in salary across foreign and domestic workers.

Also I forgot to mention that Apple SSD PCIe drives perform about twice as fast as your average SSD on SATA port... which does not come cheap as well. Together with double capacity you are looking at performance that even money cannot buy for this particular Lenovo machine. Higher-end Lenovo's can easily match that, but it comes with a price.

We can always go and compare a gaming rig to a proper business laptop, but that just doesn't make sense. There are few important things missing from the configuration from Lenovo. First is the IPS panel, you are able to get 4K TFT monitor for far less than retina resolution IPS panel. Second major issue is that Apple comes with proper 8h battery life while Lenovo will run out around 4h. Third is professional Windows license, which OS X certainly compares to.

If you try to get true Lenovo mobile workstation then the $2500 starts to be a bargain. There are valid reasons why you are able to get the machine you linked in that particular price and Lenovo mobile workstations with lesser specifications for far higher price.

Even the biggest companies care about million(s). Reduction in operating expenses are always a good thing and if facebook can shave off million dollars a year without significant downsides they will take it gladly. Big companies didnt get big by being inefficient.

The data you provided was North American web usage. Drawing any conclusion from that is dumb when talking about global market share. You know there are other markets out there, those markets also are bigger than US markets in volume.

It doesn't matter to the original story whether someone uses Netflix or combination of streaming services, it's still streaming. Both of you are happy with your selection. I'm happy with mine, I use Netflix and Apple TV. So based on this empirical study of 3 people we can say that 3 out of 3 are happy with movie streaming. The author of the article has failed.

Valid point unless situation will get so severe that enough water sources actually run dry. Then it is based on luck who gets the water and who doesn't. Perhaps that point is still far away but I wouldn't like bet on it if the drought continues.

I think cell phone with 99.9% reliability that is always in your pocket is much better 100% reliability at your office desk. Out in the countryside 100% reliability for land line is not possible. Especially when there is a strong storms, lightning storms or any major event, which happens at least once a year. For example when lightning strikes inside home via phone line blowing the phone in pieces. When that happens and has happened I much rather use my cell phone to call fire department or ambulance. I also prefer cell phone when storms that make woods fall on phone lines and electric lines.

Finnish operators have had already been able to remove physical wires for a long time now. The requirement is to provide 3G service to those homes that lost the wired connection. That has made country side much safer as the cell phone coverage got much better and cell phones work in times when phone lines are down. Cell phone towers usually work during power outage too.

I don't think the problem here is that IBM worked with the NSA. Problem is that as a shareholder IBM should have said something more about it and keep shareholders informed about the risks towards the share price. At minimum IBM should have stated it is working closely with US government organisations in electronic surveillance programs, which may cause loss of business if political environment changes.

If the assumption is that treatments covered by obamacare are useless or not needed then cost will be huge. If we assume the treatments are justified and needed then obamacare just redistributes the cost among every American. Additionally obamacare maybe helps with overall health of the nation and that is a huge cost saver.